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Cause for jubilation: At last, one of
America's wisest and most necessary voices has distilled
what he knows about politics, broadly speaking, into one
magnificent volume.
Imagine if the Rolling Stones were just now releasing its
first greatest hits album, and you'll have some idea of how
long overdue, and highly anticipated, Politics is. Here are
Hendrik Hertzberg's most significant and hilarious and devastating
and infuriating dispatches from the American scene-a scene
he has chronicled for four decades with an uncanny blend
of moral seriousness, high spirits, and perfect rhetorical
pitch. Politics is at once the story of American life from
LBJ to GWB and a testament to the power of the written word
in the right hands. In those hands, everything seems like
politics, and politics has never seemed more interesting.
Hertzberg breaks down American politics into component parts-campaigns,
debates, rhetoric, the media, wars (cultural, countercultural,
and real), high crimes and misdemeanors, the right, and more-and
draws the choicest, most telling pieces from his body of
work to illuminate each, beginning each section with a new
piece of writing framing the subject at hand. Politics 101
from the master, Politics is also an immensely rich and entertaining
mosaic of American life from the mid-1960s to the mid-2000s-a
ride through recent American history with one of the most
insightful and engaging guides imaginable.
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